Buying from grassroots brands and businesses isn’t a recent phenomenon. It’s merely closing the circle, and it goes back to a time before big retailers loaded with multinational, mass-produced brands took over our lives.

There’s a strong trend towards grassroots brands and products. The buyer is dealing directly with the maker or farm gate, which is great for locavores. The buyer knows where the product comes from, how it’s made, and what goes into it. There’s an assurance of quality and integrity that you can’t get when buying through big retailers.

Grassroots brands and products come from local communities, it is an authentic relationship. Even if you are buying online from a distance, buying a product from a grassroots brand means you are directly supporting a local producer, their family and their community. Putting community first is important to us, and we know we’re not alone in loving to find community solutions to local challenges.

It means you are supporting local enterprise, often in small towns. You are supporting a person who cares enough about what they are producing, to forsake the security of a nine to five job. Instead, they strike out and produce something beautiful, something they really care about.

These producers in turn source their supplies from other locals - like berries from local growers, grain from local farmers and hemp from a family farm. It is a virtuous circle.

It opens new markets and customers for local farmers. It cuts out middlemen who take slices of the profits and in doing so, forces up prices.

When you make the decision to support a grassroots brand and product, there’s a ripple effect in the community and the benefits of your decision filters through to families and businesses, helping keep small towns alive.

Small town grassroots brands like the Natural Distilling Co are part of a wider movement that focuses on both revitalising communities and making unique products.

It’s a return to how communities once worked together - buying, trading, and looking out for one another. It may seem revolutionary, but it’s not. What is different between now and one hundred years ago is technology. Whereas once no-one outside our community would have known about us or being able to buy our products, we can now take our grassroots brand to the world without losing our integrity or our focus on our family, friends and local community.

Do you believe in directly supporting community business? If so, our Founders Club is for you.